Week 3: Nouns and Avoiding Repetition

Announcements:
Next week during the first hour of Foundations, Tina and I will be available in the sanctuary for Q and A about Essentials.  If you are overwhelmed or confused, or just need a bit of clarification, please come.  For those who cannot be there due to tutoring, please talk with us and we will gladly set up another time to meet.

Class Focus:
Overview of nouns and pronouns (charts E, F)
Explanation of two of the sentence purposes, declarative and exclamatory
Introduction of Grammar Rule #12a,b (pronoun rules)
     These are from the gray sheets at the back of the student binder that are not page protected.

Memory Work (Grammar)
Remember that this is the foundation of Essentials.  Do this if you do nothing else.  This is where first year students live, before diving any deeper into understanding.

1) Review: Charts A, and C, (Sentence Classification, Verbs) or alternate between charts and weekly memory work (flashcards).

2) Introduce and drill charts E and F ( Nouns, Pronouns).

Remember only to go as deep as your child is ready.

Young, first year students don't have to go further than chart A and the main definitions at the top of charts C, E, and F.  Anything more is gravy.

Second and third year students should be filling in much more of each chart, at lease major divisions and subdivisions, if not details.  Review those pronoun songs (on blog sidebar, http://essentialsofgreensboro.blogspot.com) to practice the types of pronouns: Nominative, objective, possessive, reflexive, relative, demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite.


Understanding (Dialectic)

1) Usage
In class, we discussed that nouns and pronouns perform different roles, or have usage, in a sentence.  The role that the students need to comprehend during these first weeks is the "subject" role.  The student should be able to identify a noun or pronoun used as a subject.  They should also be able to identify other nouns or pronouns in a sentence, though not necessarily the function of that noun or pronoun.  For example,

It remains her pride and joy.

I expect students to know that both "It" and "her" are pronouns and that "It" is used as the subject of the sentence.  I do not expect the students to know that "her" is used as a possessive pronoun adjective, describing a predicate nominative phrase (unless they are second or third year students, in which case, they need to dust off the cobwebs that crowded in there during the summer and dive right in).

2) Type
Noun types are fun.  Banter about the difference between proper and common, concrete and abstract.  Come up with examples of collective and compound nouns.

Trick for remembering difference between concrete and abstract.

When you go to the art museum, you can touch the concrete floor, but you can't touch the abstract art.

Pronoun types aren't nearly as fun.  They fall into the memory work category.  They eventually need to be drilled, but you don't have to worry about this yet.

3) Number
We touched on the difference between singular and plural.  Talk about this concept and ask your student to identify whether a word in a sentence is singular or plural.

4) Gender
They came up with male and female in class, but neuter was a foreign concept to some.  You can point to objects in a room and explain that the paper, the window and the bookshelf are neuter.  Good vocabulary word to introduce!

5) Case (Moms, unless your child is a third year student, this is only for you to understand.)
In the second class, I completely forgot what case was.  In an effort to demonstrate that your tutor is learning right along with you, I'll give a synopsis of my findings (pp. 46-47 in EEL guide).

There is debate among grammarians concerning the English language truly having noun cases.  The notion of a case of noun is derived from Latin, where nouns change their form (or endings) to reflect the role (e.g., family) that noun is playing in a sentence.  In the English language, our nouns do not change endings, or form, to reflect their role in a sentence.  Rather, a particular noun's role is determined more by word order, according to where the word is located in a sentence.

So, in English, case refers to a noun's place in a sentence, or it's job, as demonstrated by the form it takes.

Nominative or subjective case includes pronouns used as the subject.
I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they  can all be used as subjects.  Me or him could not be subjects.  They belong to the

Objective case (used as direct objects, indirect objects, objects of the preposition, or object complement nouns).

Possessive case refers to pronouns used as possessive noun adjectives

Other usages are appositive and nouns of direct address.

Have fun talking about all these subjects this week.  Next week we introduce the task sheet!  Fun!